


Pieces

by lovelikerain611



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble Series, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1397803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelikerain611/pseuds/lovelikerain611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of hp drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sugar

Luna brings a different kind of calm to him after Fred dies.

There is a cacophony of sound in his head, a million different things all fighting and pulling and pushing for attention. Things don't make sense like they used to, and he's got to make some quiet space inside his head.

He tries. He fails.

Luna comes to him, one day, completely out of the blue, and she grabs his face between her cool palms and she shakes her head. "When will you learn?" she asks, her voice gently scolding.

George must have looked confused, because Luna just smiles.

"Wrackspurts, silly," she says, and then she presses a bottle of tonic into his hand. "Three times a day," she whispers. "And you'll find some space in your head."

It does not surprise him when he finds out that the tonic is only sugar water. But he takes it anyway, because what the hell?

And perhaps because of the sugar water, and perhaps because of Luna, and perhaps because some distance from the pain of that day helped make things clearer, George finds the quiet space in his head, like Luna said he would.

He does not intend to go tell her. After all, he highly doubts that he had a Wrackspurt problem, and, even if he did, he doubted sugar water would do anything to clear them up, but he takes a walk one day and he ends up at the other end of Diagon Alley, standing in front of a quaint little shop with "Luna Lovegood, Healer of Holistic Medicines" on a sign on the front.

George glances at his watch without seeing the time, and then he walks in.

A bell jingles in the depths of the space and George takes a minute to look around the inside. He's in what appears to be a waiting room, filled with cushy, overstuffed chairs and sunflowers on tables. A small desk sits against one wall, next to a curtain that is a bright, violent yellow. A minute passes and then the curtain rustles and Luna steps out into the room, wearing a set of voracious purple robes with a large tulip bobbing in her hair. Her earrings matched the tulip and appeared to be actually growing.

"Oh, hullo, George," she greets him pleasantly as her earrings bloom over and over again. "What can I help you with? Your Wrackspurts seem to have cleared up; I can see you much better now."

George nods absently and jams his hands in his pockets. "It's just sugar water, Luna," he blurts finally and Luna laughs.

"I know," she says. "Wrackspurts hate sugar water."

George is a little taken aback and he rubs the back of his neck. "Well—I feel better. Um. Thanks."

Luna nods, her face lit up. "You're welcome."

George doesn't want to leave, but he can't find anymore words. Thankfully, he doesn't have to; Luna seems to know exactly what he needs, and she takes his hand and leads him back behind the curtain.

It's a surprisingly calm room, in comparison with the waiting room. It is what George assumes to be Luna's office and he settles into a small chair set across from a desk. Luna settles in at her desk and pulls a stack of papers towards her. It takes her a minute or two, but then she nods.

"It's hard, isn't it?" she asks, her voice soft. "At first, you don't even feel like moving on, you know? And then when you finally do, you start feeling guilty, as if that makes any sense. Because a part of you doesn't want to leave them behind."

Luna lights a couple of candles for no apparent reason and then she steeples her fingers, her ridiculous earrings blooming faster in the light. "After Mother died, I saw Daddy go through it," she says softly. "I think he still goes through it. I don't think it's ever something you get over, the guilt. I think it's something you deal with every single day of your life, and I think that's okay." Luna looks up at him. "You're going to be okay, George. I can feel it."

George doesn't say anything, but he does relax a little and Luna smiles.

He's going to be okay.


	2. Addicted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She hates herself a little bit more each time.

She hates herself a little bit more every time.

His fingers press indentations into her hips, leave bruises on her skin, and she craves his rough, unbridled lust, as much as he craves her curves. He wants her for her body; for the curvy hips and voluptuous breasts and her peaches and cream skin, her dark hair and dark eyes and painted smirk. He wants her for the simple fact that she is the complete opposite of the Greengrass girl he's shackled to.

Pansy likes to tell herself that he loves her, not that slut, but she knows it's a lie. It tastes bitter in the back of her throat, like bile.

Pansy is round in places Greengrass is rail-thin. Harsh where she is gentle, hard where she is soft. Pansy knows Draco does not want her for the happily ever after, but that he wants her for the sweet rush of adrenaline he gets from her, from fucking someone who isn't his wife.

Something about routine makes men like Draco wild—something about chaining them to one life their entire life makes men like Draco a little crazy, a little hungry, a little rebellious.

And, for all that Pansy knows it is so wrong on so many levels, she is addicted to him. Draco is her fix, and she needs him just as surely as she needs the air.

She hates herself for falling for Draco time and again, and she hates herself for not caring.

It is always the same. Pansy stands still on the corner, wrapped in a cloak, standing half in shadow, trying to avoid eye-contact with anyone and then Draco is suddenly there and Pansy, where she had been hard and tense before, relaxes, throwing herself into his arms.

She relaxes and an easy smirk steals across her face and anyone could mistake them for two casual lovers, spending the afternoon together, but Pansy touches his cheek and he jerks away, tugging her arm hard, and pulling her down the street to the small inn they frequent.

It's always the same.

He pays for the room, and then drags her into it, jerking at his robes. Once the door is shut, he jerks at her robes and then pins her to the bed.

It feels good. Pansy is anything but delicate and she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy it.

But.

Sometimes she wants gentle and loving where Draco is always hard and fast and furious and bruising. The bruises last for days, but they don't bother Pansy. She is not china and lace; she does not break easily. She just wants a little romance sometimes.

Once, just once, she wishes Draco would be the Draco he was at Hogwarts. And he was hardly all butterflies and sunshine and daisies there, but he did do little things for her. Hold doors. Pour her tea, fix it the way she liked it. Casual touches, the lending of a cloak when it's chilly outside. Draco was raised a gentleman, for all that he was a spoiled brat. Malfoys were arrogant, but they weren't rude to their women.

But that was the problem, then. That Pansy wasn't Draco's woman. That honor went to the Greengrass girl, not Pansy, never Pansy. She was the Other Woman, and this released Draco from all the niceties and expectations of his relationship with Astoria.

She'd be lying if she said that Draco's attachment to her was anything more than a middle-aged crisis, a release. Draco wanted her for reasons she didn't want to be wanted. Where Pansy desired romance, Draco saw only his release, and that was the true tragedy.

That Pansy would belong to Draco so wholly and completely, that she would come when called—in this lay the crux of her addiction.

(Sometimes, after Draco had left, wiping the lipstick off of his face and tugging his robes straight, after he'd sneered down at her, after he'd set a time for their next meeting, after the ache and the cold set it, sometimes Pansy would imagine she and Astoria's roles were reversed. That she, Pansy, was the fine woman on Draco's arm, that she gave him everything Astoria did not. But the war has broken more than just the heroes, and here she is.)

Addicted, and she hates herself a little bit more every time.


	3. birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Hannah forgets.

Sometimes Hannah forgets, in the midst of this hell, how incredibly, painfully young they are. It's a little too easy to push childhood aside in favor of survival, but Hannah grieves the loss of pigtails and curls, takes it harder than she thought she would.

Seamus makes some smart remark to Lavender about her party-planning skills going south when they gather around some alcohol and some stale cake and mumble through "Happy Birthday" for the Patil twins. Elladora Michaels has just vanished and, though Hannah hopes and prays with every fiber of her being Ella's parents have just pulled her out of school, Ella's Muggleborn and they all know a much grimmer fate awaits the freckle-faced Ravenclaw.

Anyway, Ella's disappearance hangs like a black cloud over their party and they're all just fumbling for reasons to be happy. This doesn't make for a very happy birthday, anyway, and if things continue the way they have, the Patils aren't going to have a very happy year, either.

Hannah can't help but cry a little bit when she realizes that Parvati and Padma are eighteen.

(She's seventeen and she's never felt so painfully young.)

**

Her eighteenth birthday is forgotten—it's three days after the Final Battle and everyone is still a little too shell-shocked, a little too sore and broken to remember such a thing as a birthday.

Susan would've remembered, Hannah comforts herself, throwing herself whole-heartedly into the cleanup. Susan would've thrown something together, probably with Lavender's help, and they'd have celebrated it, somehow. But Susan's lying in the Great Hall next to Ernie and Colin and Professor Lupin and his wife and Fred and so many others, and Lavender's in the Intensive Care Ward at Mungo's so Hannah's eighteenth dawns with nothing so much as a mumbled "happy birthday."

She moves the big stones from the towers on her birthday and as the sun sets and her muscles start to scream at her in protest, she finds a seat on one of them and shoves her sweaty blonde hair out of her eyes. Neville brings her some water and she thanks him with a sad, tired smile.

(He takes her out for ice cream that night, and sings her "happy birthday" so quietly she barely hears it.)

**

Hannah mourns the little things other people seem to have forgotten in the wake of bigger tragedies—the plants in Greenhouse One (everyone is devasted by Greenhouse Four's destruction—they lost so many remedies and it will take years—decades—to replace it), which aren't necessarily important, but Hannah cries for them, anyway, because it's just one more thing of beauty Voldemort has ripped apart.

And Hannah mourns the gardens on the East side of the castle, and she mourns the whomping willow, and all the poor little bugs and animals that never had a chance, anyway. So many other things have been lost, but Hannah takes time to remember the small things.

She's busy crying over a little family of rabbits that she found when Neville stumbles across her. He sits down next to her heavily, smelling like grass and sweat and dirt and boy and Hannah just leans into him.

"It's silly," she whispers, petting the soft fur of one of the babies. "So silly for me to be upset over this when we've lost so much else, but it's just so senseless. It all is."

Neville's hands cover hers and set the baby rabbit down. "Not silly," he disagrees. "It just proves this bloody war hasn't taken all you have to offer."

(She's got so much more to give, Neville reminds her, so much more life left in her.)

**

Neville pushes her to go onto to Healer's Academy, or perhaps into teaching—something she can give back in.

Hannah refuses all of it. She is done with pain and suffering and she cannot—she cannot—stand to bandage one more broken person. She's put herself and Neville and everyone else back together so many times she's forgotten how to just be Hannah. She has given more of herself than she ever intended to—she will keep the remaining pieces of her heart for herself.

She takes over the Leaky Cauldron when Tom passes on. It is rewarding work, for a Hufflepuff, and Hannah adores all of her customers. She supports Neville whole-heartedly in his Herbology studies, but Hannah is done with school and done with giving of herself.

(After their children are born, Neville asks her again, and Hannah declines. She has given all of the pieces of her life she cares to spare.)


	4. Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face…we must do that which we think we cannot." –Eleanor Roosevelt

Her pyjama pants have moons and stars on them and they hang off her hips in a way that's almost-not-quite seductive. (It's not intended to be seductive. She's lost weight, that's all it is, and she can't find the time to tailor her clothes, let alone her pyjamas.) Her sleep shirt is grey and hangs off her, too, and she wears socks to bed, thick socks with little dancing house elves on them. Hermione (at least the Hermione from first year, the Hermione decked out in innocence and self-righteousness) would hate them, would screech something about them being totally gauche, totally inappropriate. He thinks they're funny, and funnier still because of what Hermione would think. (It's an easier reality, to think that Hermione would still find a cause to pin herself to, even now when the world's gone spare, and there's no sense in anything anymore—even now, Hermione might still fight for rights for house elves, even now.)

Lavender has never given a second thought to what Hermione might think, except for when it concerned a certain ginger-haired boy and her first, innocent love. (It's not love. Not really. Not in the truest, barest sense of the word. In that sense, it is only a schoolgirl crush, but to sixteen-year old Lavender, it was love and lace and happily ever after until Hermione tore it all away.) As far as Lavender is concerned, Hermione and her opinions on Lavender's sleepwear can fuck well off.

It's so very strange, to see Lavender in her pyjamas, because Lavender is still Lavender, even decked out in crimson bravery and golden courage instead of pink lace and frills. She has a very firm opinion on when and which pyjamas she is to be seen in, and these—the ones with moons and stars and teenage innocence—these would hardly make the cut.

So it's surprising, to say the very least, when Lavender comes barging into his dorm room, wearing the moon and the stars on her pants, it's surprising, and not in a way that Seamus would like to be surprised.

What's more surprising, though, is that Lavender is afraid. She masks it well enough, under the layers of careful arrogance and just enough Lavender-esque disdain to draw Neville off, but Seamus knows her better than that.

Not to say he's any great success with witches. He's barely competent when it comes to friendship—girls are a different story. Romantic Seamus is not, and it's no great secret, no big revelation. But he knows Lavender. He can't woo her, not to save his life, but he knows her, and he knows that when she comes stomping into their dorm room, all haughty arrogance and casual disdain (Lavender is still Lavender, after all), she is scared, down to her very bones, and she doesn't know what to do.

Not that he's any better. Not that Neville's any better. Because there were no instructions on "what to do when your school gets overtaken by Death Eaters and your fearless leader has gone missing" and Neville and Seamus and everyone—they're just making do, doing the best they can, making it up as they go along, the best they know how.

Seamus doesn't know what to do any more than the (painfully young) girl standing in front of him, but he's got just enough crimson recklessness running through his veins that it's easy to pretend he does, to pretend he knows what Neville's doing, to playact that he's got a plan (he doesn't), that the Carrows don't scare him (they do), that the girl standing in front of him doesn't break his heart into little pieces (she does).

Seamus takes Lavender's arm and leads her from the room because he knows Lavender, and he knows the tears are coming, and he knows Lavender hates to cry in front of anyone, unless she can be the center of attention and have people doting on her, and that Lavender—the social butterfly, the attention seeker—she's long gone and the girl she's left in her presence is more woman than girl.

He's right—she dissolves into tears moments after he leads her off.

Lavender—when she's really crying, and not just letting a few tears run down her cheeks—when she's really, truly crying, it's not a pretty sight. Her face goes blotchy and swollen, and there is snot and tears and weird facial expressions. Lavender does not cry prettily, as much as she's tried, and she especially doesn't right this second.

Seamus never knows what to do with a crying woman. He doesn't know what to do with a woman, period, much less one who's crying because she's scared. (A part of Seamus wants to sit down and cry right along with her, but he thinks that might be a poor choice, and instead he opts for a careful silence, knowing Lavender will talk if and when she wants to.)

She doesn't disappoint. Amid hiccups, she explains that she's just scared. (Seamus already knew this.) Lavender is only seventeen, after all, and she's no child, but there are days when she'd much rather be silly and seventeen and girly instead of this brave war hero of a woman. Seventeen still clings to the last vestiges of childhood, but those have been ripped away from her, and she wants them back.

Childhood looked good on Lavender—she is well-suited to silly frilly girly things and syrup-sweet dreams. Wartime is much less kind to silk and lace; Lavender decked out in hell and heartbreak is much less becoming.

(She's still beautiful, Seamus thinks, though Lavender is just barely pretty, still beautiful with her world running tracks down her cheeks, down her chin, making wet spots on her shirt. Is this what they've been reduced to? The bumbling sidekick and his sad, just-pretty bride? There has to be more. This can't be everything he's fighting for. And yet something in her pretty blue eyes and long honey-brown hair, something in the curve of her shoulders and the press of her hands against her face—something there whispers that he'd do it all again, for her, only for her.)

"Sorry," she says finally, her voice congested. "I'm sorry. I don't quite know what came over me."

He hangs an arm around her shoulders. "Ah do," he says, exaggerating his thick Gaelic burr to irritate her. "Yer not the only lass who's lost her composure in mah presence."

It has the desired effect. Lavender (despite herself, despite the war, despite their world falling down around them) smiles and smacks his shoulder. "Fuck off, Seamus." (The smile reaches her voice, and Seamus glows with pride. Maybe he knows a thing or two about women after all.)

It's funny, but it's that stolen moment that Lavender thinks about when Amycus points his wand at her and says (in a voice that's so different from Seamus', but all Lavender can hear in her head is Yer not the only lass) that if she didn't hex little Odette Peters, she wouldn't hex anything at all, and that moment (and Seamus, behind her, holding his breath for her) gives her enough crimson to put a little starch in her spine, raise those pretty blues and look Amycus dead in the eyes.

You don't scare me anymore, are the words she screams at him across their staring match, but Amycus laughs and raises his wand.

The courage doesn't fall from her eyes—it only grows stronger, brighter, even as she writhes on the floor in front of him. A lioness rises from the tatters of silk and lace and Lavender grows into her bravery, into the crimson and gold that run through her veins.


	5. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's "you are my sunshine," the way she's said it the past 60 years and Ernie hears it as clearly as if she'd spoken it.

The war takes her voice. Some curse hits her throat and, for eight long months, Susan can't eat solid food. She subsists on nutrient-rich potions and water until her throat finally heals enough to handle something more solid.

Ernie is by her side through the entire thing. His was the first face she saw, it was his hands clinging to hers; it was his voice that pulled her out of that deep, dark place, looked her in the eyes and said "you are worth fighting for."

Her first "solid" meal is strawberry ice cream. It tastes like she imagines heaven might, or maybe she just really likes having something with more of a substance that water. (Heaven has a lot more substance. She'd like to sink her teeth into heaven.)

Ernie watches her eat it, and the look on his face makes her chest hurt. He's just beaming, just about to shatter into a million pieces of sunshine right there across from her. He's proud and Susan smiles back, reaching for the spoon again.

She never speaks again. She can't. The curse has destroyed her voice beyond a hope of repair. She learns to speak with her hands, to write her words, but it's frustrating, at first, and Susan never does well with frustration. She is a Hufflepuff, and she is patient and kind and gentle, but she's hardly perfect, and she finds frustration in herself, in her inability to appropriately convey what would be so easy to say with her voice. She lost tone and inflection and there is only so much emotion she can convey with quill and parchment.

Ernie, though, Ernie is a saint, and she would tell him if the war hadn't stolen her voice. So she writes the words, over and over, and smiles them over at him, and he is the reason she gets up in the morning. He is her beginning and her end; when the days turn dark with her despair, he paints her a brighter sky. The war took all the family she had, and so Ernie gives her his.

He proposes to her without words, one day. It is a particularly difficult day for Susan, and he comes in with soup from the Leaky, compliments of Hannah, and she cries silent, bitter tears because she will never speak again, and Ernie tilts her chin up, and looks into her eyes and she just knows.

"Marry me?" he whispers, but it's only a formality; he's already asked her a hundred times and she's said yes a hundred more.

She is released from Mungo's on a rare sunny day. "Look," Ernie says, her hand tucked safely in his as they make their way to the Apparation checkpoint. "Even the sunshine is happy to see you."

You are my sunshine, she thinks, and later she will write the words, mouth them as he makes love to her, presses her into his sheets, makes her feel like all the world will be right again.

When she wears white and stands across from Ernie, her vows are written on her hands. She presses them to his face, and pulls him close. Her promises don't need spoken word to be kept; they need only Ernie, and strawberry ice cream, and the way she feels when she looks at him, like she might just melt, or burst into a million lovely pieces.

Not that it's easy. Love grows easily, but its survival takes work and dedication. They are human; they fight. Susan may not have her words, but her aim could rival Ginny Weasley's when she's angry.

But they survive. There are children and years spent learning each other, and each year is lovelier than the last, Susan would argue. And when they are grey and there are grandchildren, and Ernie's hearing fades, Susan presses her hands into his. It's "you are my sunshine," the way she's said it the past 60 years and Ernie hears it as clearly as if she'd spoken it.


	6. Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Real beauty is on the inside, she supposes, but she does pretty well on the outside, too.

They try really, really hard to make it work, but it's a little less exciting when all that's happening are doctor's appointments and burned dinners and picking up the pieces they've got left. Lavender and Seamus have always been well-suited for the extraordinary; the mundane suits them much less, and four weeks after Lavender leaves the hospital for the last time, their romance turns like the leaves and falls just as fast.

She tries. (God, does she try.) So does he. They both give it their all—give this failing romance everything they have. They are war-torn Gryffindors—they do not surrender so easily, but when the sun sinks and their relationship lays in tatters on the floor, it's plain to see that some battles aren't worth fighting.

They part amicably. It's nothing personal, nothing bitter or broken about their relationship, but it worked better when the world was falling down around their ears. Now, in the bright sunshine of another era, their relationship is just one more relic from a darker time. Their parting is only the natural progression of things; the DA was the glue that held their relationship together and now that its dissolved, they are nothing more than pieces that don't quite fit.

Lavender is passion—she is ripe red splashes on the page. She loves and fights with all that she has, but with Seamus, that passion fades. There is only one fight, only one screaming, knock-down, drag-out fight that leaves Lavender a little breathless and makes her wonder if it's worth fighting for after all, but Seamus sees the light in her eyes and he shakes his head. "There are better things out there, for both of us, Lav."

And she can't help but agree, because the fire in her veins from the fighting fades with the sunrise, and she has to find other reasons to live. (Lavender is a romantic. She wants Seamus to be the end and the beginning of her world.)

Single feels better than she thought it would. Independence feels good. She can do whatever the hell she pleases whenever the hell she pleases, and that almost makes up for the scars that paint her back in red and white lace. Almost.

It hurts, when Seamus introduces her to his "better thing." She wears golden curls and deep brown eyes and she is barely 18. She is untouched—she's some witch from South Africa Seamus met at a Quidditch match. Lavender resents her—she resents this pretty, unblemished face—the perfect hair and the trusting smile. Lavender has only ever had "pretty" and this girl claims beautiful as a birthright. But more than that, Seamus has traded Lavender in for innocence; those deep brown eyes are a shade darker than Lavender's own, but Lavender's house ghosts; this girl's are bright and happy. To her, Lord Voldemort is nothing more than a childhood terror; a threat to chase her into her bed at night.

And Lavender is jealous, if only for a minute, that this girl would claim her hero's affections when she was the one to fight beside him; she was the one to have endured so much for the cause.

But green was never her color and Lavender tries to let it go. She designs clothes and marches around with her scars on display. (Lavender loves attention. That, at least, hasn't changed.) If they want to stare, Lavender will give them a reason.

Her something else takes his sweet time coming around. He has Weasley-red hair and crinkly brown eyes. He stares at her smooth arms, her long legs, the arch of her spine, and he sees the scars, but he sees the lioness underneath. He wears scars all his own, but his burns are from fighting with dragons and the other scars he wears where no one can see. They swap stories and Lavender feels like she can claim beautiful as her own, now.

Real beauty is on the inside, she supposes, but she does damn well on the outside, too.

**Author's Note:**

> part of an upload from ff.net. I am Hecate's Wrath over there. Originally posted 2/27/12


End file.
